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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Nice About-Face, Gammons

(Not Hank) Aaron wrote yesterday about Peter Gammons' rare set of tweets that weren't keyed-in from his pocket where he blasted the Astros.

To put all of his tweets from the other night into one paragraph, it would read like this:

If I'm an ALE or ALC owner, Houston's plan to have no payroll, lose,get the 1-2 pick 4 years in a row and still steal revenue-sharing $ may guarantee 3 teams in the AL West win 90 games and make the playoffs, and spit on the integrity of the sport. Fellow big market teams who have payrolls under $40M should 1.not get revenue-sharing and 2. be out of the protected pick business. Rewarding trying to lose is wrong
Well, that's interesting. Because (and a captip to Appy Astros for the link) not 15 months ago was Gammons exalting the now-rival Oakland A's for "being creative" and, gasp, even:

We get what Billy Beane has to do. He has to hope that in 2014 or 2015 the Athletics have moved to a new park in San Jose. That is why he's trading assets like Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Andrew Bailey to get 10 players with less than one year service time, players that will be with the Athletics if and when they move and to be the foundation of a team constructed so that the ballpark and competitiveness will coincide as happened perfectly, for instance, when the Indians moved into what then was called Jacobs Field.

Hold the phone. Trading "assets" for lots of young players so that they'll be the core of the team when they're ready to compete? What a novel concept!

Gammons holds up the Rays as a shining example of how a team should be run given the constraints of revenue and division strength. Remember when the Rays were able to draft David Price, Matt Moore and Jeremy Hellickson (all mentioned specifically by Gammons)?

Hellickson was drafted in 2005. Evan Longoria in 2006. David Price and Matt Moore in 2007. Gammons realizes that, in those three years, the Rays totaled 194 wins, right?

This is how it works, Gammons. And you can't change what you find Acceptable and Proper for a baseball team in less than a year and a half.

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